
I don’t wish to play favorites, however this explicit cat habits is one in every of mine: the butt wiggle earlier than the pounce.
Looking is critical enterprise for cats, and there’s not a cat alive who would respect being referred to as “lovely” after they’re about to ambush a home fly. However that’s precisely what this habits is: cute as all get-out.
However cats don’t waste power being cute, particularly after they’re in the course of an energy-sucking exercise like searching. There should be a scientific motive why cats shake their backsides earlier than attacking.
Let’s focus on!

Understanding cats’ searching type is essential to understanding the butt wiggle.
Predators use a wide range of methods to seize dinner.
Wolves, who aren’t notably sturdy or quick as people, work as a staff to convey down prey. They use their uncommon intelligence to plot surprisingly refined assault plans, and hunt cooperatively.[1]
Hawks and falcons chase prey to exhaustion.[2] Dragonflies use “ballistic interception,” which means they predict the motion of prey and attempt to meet them on their anticipated path.[3]
Cats, then again, are ambush hunters, which implies that they conceal first, after which leap out to seize their prey.[4]
This strategy, which includes ready, ready, and ready, adopted by an explosion of motion, in all probability has one thing to do with the butt wiggle.

A cat in searching mode crouches down low, eyes mounted on his meant prey.
As a cat prepares to pounce, he sticks his bottom within the air and shortly transfers weight backwards and forwards between his two hind legs.
The impact of the speedy weight switch is a swaying of the cat’s again finish. It’s this swinging of the hips that cat lovers check with because the “butt wiggle.”
Generally, a video is price a thousand phrases:
The butt-wiggle habits has been noticed in massive cats who’re additionally ambush hunters, together with mountain lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards.[5] Watch the entire video of a mountain lion wiggling its butt beneath, or skip forward to 1:00.
I’m not conscious of every other ambush hunters who wiggle earlier than attacking, however that’s probably attributable to their very own anatomies, type of ambush searching, meant prey, and the atmosphere by which they hunt.
For instance, chameleons, who’re additionally ambush hunters, stick out their tongues to seize bugs, however they don’t leap.[6]
Ambush-hunting polar bears typically simply wait at respiratory holes to seize seals, which is a really completely different form of searching approach than that employed by cats.[7]
No matter you would possibly learn on the Web, nobody actually is aware of why cats wiggle earlier than pouncing on their prey. However there are some compelling theories. Let’s have a look at these.
Does wiggling put together a cat’s muscle mass for pouncing?
This can be a very credible principle.
A tremendous examine of mountain lions, which required mountain lions to be taught to stroll on a treadmill, proved that these cats (and really probably our home cats, too), don’t have the cardio capability to maintain up a high-energy exercise for any size of time.[8]
Listed below are the mountain lions on a treadmill. Positively not one thing I assumed I might ever see:
Looking cats have the flexibility to supply one massive burst of pace and pressure to take down prey, however they’ve solely acquired one shot to get it proper.
Cats may very well be rather a lot like human sprinters, who additionally explode from a standstill and require a giant burst of power, however for under quick distances.
Have you ever ever watched sprinters getting ready for a race? Watching a bunch of athletes on the beginning line is fascinating. Some might be leaping vertically into the air, whereas others might be performing tuck jumps, by which they bounce straight up and whereas folding their knees.[9] After which they will get into their beginning blocks.
The explanation for this habits is known as Submit-Activation Potentiation (PAP), which will get motor neurons and muscle mass fibers prepped for explosive exercise, like a 100-yard sprint. PAP has been confirmed to enhance a runner’s efficiency.[10]
Possibly cats have learn the research about PAP, too.
Does wiggling enhance accuracy, like a observe swing?
Golfers do it, baseball gamers do it. Even individuals taking part in darts in a bar do it: they form of mime the movement that they’re about to carry out just a few instances, earlier than they do it for actual.
We’ve already established that ambush hunters, like cats, don’t get a do-over: they’ve acquired one probability to catch prey, or the gig is up.
One examine of golf placing confirmed that observe strokes truly improved the accuracy of the actual stroke. The conclusion of the examine was that golfers used the data (whether or not consciously or subconsciously) in regards to the place and motion of their our bodies, and their impact on the membership and the ball, to enhance their precise strokes.[11]
Maybe the wiggling is only a cat taking a “observe swing” earlier than the massive pounce.
Does wiggling remind a cat’s mind in regards to the place of his physique?
Proprioception is an idea associated to the thought of the observe swing. Proprioception is taken into account the “sixth sense,” and it’s the mind’s sense of the physique’s place and motion.
Proprioception is what permits us to the touch our noses with our fingertips, even when our eyes are closed. It’s how we all know how lengthy our strolling stride is, with out even wanting.
We – cats and people and different animals – have nerves embedded in our muscle mass, which ship info to our brains about how a lot stress and pace needs to be utilized to an exercise.[12]
It’s potential that the wiggle is taking part in a sensory position within the ambush. Maybe it form of reestablishes that connection between the mind and the hind legs, in preparation for the rapid-fire communication between these physique components that occurs in a pounce.[13]
Is a wiggling cat getting traction, or checking the soundness of the ground?
Whereas it positive seems like a cat who’s shifting her weight from one hind foot to the opposite is feeling out the ground beneath her toes, I give this principle a thumbs down.
The situation of the bottom beneath a cat’s paws is essential, little doubt. A slippery, overly comfortable, or uneven floor might make a pounce ineffective, at greatest, and harmful at worst.
However I’d contend that this might be true of any bounce, and I’d be on the lookout for a wiggle anytime a cat was taking a leap from the again of the couch to the highest of the cat tree, or from the kitchen counter to the ground.
However cats don’t “take a look at the floor” any time apart from after they’re searching.
The identical goes for traction. Aren’t there different instances when a leaping cat want to maximize traction? I believe there may be.
Which is why I don’t suppose the wiggle has something to do with traction, or the testing of the floor beneath a cat’s toes.
However within the absence of scientific proof, it is as much as you to resolve!
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Daybreak LaFontaine is a lifelong animal lover who all the time appears to have a little bit pet hair in her keyboard. Her weblog, Kitty Contemplations, helps cat guardians higher perceive and take care of the particular beings they share their lives and houses with. Her cat-products enterprise, Cat within the Field, sells stunning, well-made, and award-winning merchandise that she designed to satisfy the organic wants of cats.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] Wild Looking Ways: How 7 Apex Predators Do What They Do Finest, freerangeamerican.us/how-apex-predators-hunt/. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.
[2] Kulkarni, Rhucha. “High 8 Predatory Ways within the Wild You Should Know.” Saevus, 4 June 2018, www.saevus.in/amazing-predatory-tactics-in-the-wild/.
[3] “Predation.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Basis, 31 Dec. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation.
[4] Hani, Daniel. “How Wild Is Your Cat? 6 Key Behaviours That Reveal the Wild Ancestry of Your Cat.” Uncover Wildlife, www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/6-key-behaviours-that-reveal-the-wild-ancestry-of-your-cat. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.
[5] “Why Do Cats Wiggle earlier than They Pounce?” PetMD, www.petmd.com/cat/habits/why-do-cats-wiggle-before-they-pounce. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.
[6] “Ambush Predator.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Basis, 31 Dec. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambush_predator.
[7] “High 10 Info about Polar Bears.” WWF, www.wwf.org.uk/be taught/fascinating-facts/polar-bears. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.
[8] “Examine of Mountain Lion Energetics Exhibits the Energy of the Pounce.” UC Santa Cruz Information, information.ucsc.edu/2014/10/puma-energetics.html. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.
[9] Lee, Jimson. “Why Do Sprinters Do Tuck Jumps earlier than Beginning Blocks.” SpeedEndurance.Com, 21 Could 2014, speedendurance.com/2014/05/21/why-do-sprinters-do-tuck-jumps-before-starting-blocks/.
[10] Walker, Owen. “Submit-Activation Potentiation.” Science for Sport, 22 Aug. 2023, www.scienceforsport.com/post-activation-potentiation/.
[11] Hasegawa, Yumiko, et al. “Observe Motions Carried out throughout Preperformance Preparation Drive the Precise Movement of Golf Placing.” Frontiers in Psychology, U.S. Nationwide Library of Drugs, 25 Mar. 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7109320/.
[12] Bogart, Dr. Desiree Van. “Proprioception- the Sixth Sense That Each Athlete Must Develop.” Desired Well being Chiropractic, 4 June 2019, www.desiredhealthchiro.com/2018/10/29/proprioception-the-sixth-sense-that-every-athlete-needs-to-develop/.
[13] Sonoma, Serena. “Why Do Cats Wiggle Their Butts earlier than They Pounce?” LiveScience, Purch, 15 Sept. 2022, www.livescience.com/64950-why-cats-wiggle-butts-before-pouncing.html.